[AntiGuv]

While your point is worth making, this isn't a very good context to make it in. Witch trials in Europe were winding down by that time and ended a generation or so afterward. In fact, Salem was notable for being one of the last major witch trials in Western civilization. Moreover, Puritan Massachusetts wasn't any kind of "rights based" culture..

[hellinahandcart]

Witch trials in Europe were winding down by that time and ended a generation or so afterward.

Wow...a generation in Europe versus a year and a half in Massachusetts. Now, what was it you were saying about context?

Moreover, Puritan Massachusetts wasn't any kind of "rights based" culture..

Compared to what they left, it was. They were free to order their own society in the way they choose, rigid as it might look to us today. Others were free to leave if they didn't like it. Others were rather forcefully told they might feel "freer" elsewhere, that's how we got Rhode Island.

Not a bad state of affairs in the rights department, considering it was over three hundred years ago.